Saturday, October 5, 2013
Dear Otus,
I read in the paper last Sunday about that 14-foot monster alligator killed below Millwood Lake. Any chance Game and Fish is going to eradicate those vermin?
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, even though I must disappoint your expectations.
Thanks to the enormous popularity of History Channel’s Swamp People, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is restocking large alligators again in hopes of turning all of south Arkansas into a hunting mecca to rival Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River Basin.
Due to their current few numbers, Arkansas alligator season only lasts for two consecutive weekends in September. But the goal is to return the alligator population to the glory days of pre-statehood. When Arkansas became a territory in 1819, there were an estimated 250,000 alligators roaming our swamps and bayous, and about 3 million across the South.
Glory days? In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto was camped at Autiamque(present day Tar Camp Park near Redfield) and wrote in his journal that the ’gators in the Rio Napeste (later called the Arkansas River) were “esbirros del diablo” - the devil’s minions. And “tan gruesas como las pulgas en el vientre de un perro” (numerous).
One hundred and fifty years of agricultural drainage efforts robbed the reptiles of much of their habitat, and by 1970 their numbers had dwindled to a few hundred.
Between 1972 and 1984, however, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission moved 2,841 juveniles - 3-footers - from Louisiana to private property near Wilmot, and to Grassy Lake south of Millwood Lake. The recently harvested 14-foot critter is theresult all these years later.
Encouraged by the success, the commission has begun a seven-year program to reintroduce large adult alligators (ones good for eight pairs of boots, a dozen wallets, three purses, a golf bag and 20 key fobs) to their former range.
That means by the end of the decade, you can expect ’gators the size of Chevy Malibus to inhabit everywhere from Miller County in the southwest, up the Interstate 30 corridor to DeGray Lake, over to the oxbow lakes near Scott and on to the Cache River bottoms north of Brinkley and Stuttgart, down the White and St. Francis rivers to near Marianna, and on to Lake Village in the southeast.
’Gator hunters from across the land will bring much needed revenue to the state’s economy. Even History Channel says it would consider a Swamp People spinoff.
And those old enough to recall Big Arkie can well imagine the boon to tourism.
Big Arkie (ca. 1942-1970) was the main attraction at the Little Rock Zoo for almost 20 years. The ’gator was captured in a flooded pasture west of Hope in 1952. He was 13 feet long, but weighed a relatively svelte 500 pounds.
When he died, Big Arkie was stuffed and is now sitting on top of a supply shelf in the Herpetology Collection of the Museum of Zoology at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
That’s sort of an ignominious end for the state’s most famous reptile.
An added bonus of having monster ’gators around is that they’ll help control the state’s exploding feral hog problem.
A whole hog quarter was found in the stomach of the alligator killed last month in Hempstead County. It also had a hog skull, “a mishmash of parts,” a Koozie six-pack Re-elect Mayor Billy Ray promotional cooler from Nashville (with two remaining Bud Lights), a Titleist golf ball, a Banjo the Dog Beanie Baby, a vanity Louisiana license plate that read “RAYGN,” a complete Shimano Stradic Ci4 FA spinning reel, a two-disc set of Conway Twitty’s Greatest Hits (and a Love’s Travel Stop receipt), and a Cabela’s 12-LED Lantern.
Some outdoor enthusiasts have voiced concern that large alligators might affect attendance at some of the state’s more popular swimming holes.
Kevin Hardcastle, lifeguard at Millwood State Park, said swimmers were sometimes hard to find this summer.
“Yeah, folks would come to the beach and picnic area,” Hardcastle said, “but the four or five ’gators out in the deeper area sort of discouraged them from getting in over their knees. But everybody knows alligators won’t mess with humans less they’re sick, old, feeble, thrashing around or very young. A full grown person ought not to worry.”
Game and Fish is attempting to overcome the public’s natural fear of alligators by using the William E. “Bill” Clark Presidential Park Wetlands, adjacent to the Clinton Presidential Center, as the holding pen for the next batch of 523 alligators.
No fear - the critters are at the western end and separated from the walkway by a chain-link fence.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you visitors are welcome through mid-November, but keep your dogs and kids on a leash when you visit.
Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. Email:
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